When Michael Knapp brings his lover Dan Biggs home to meet his parents, he doesn't expect things to go smoothly. His mother's been trying to marry him off for years, and sometimes he isn't even sure his father knows he exists. He has always felt like the shadow son, competing with his terminally stupid older brother and smart-mouthed little sister for his parents' attention. Coming out to them over dinner seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally get noticed.<br><br>But an unexpected phone call interrupts his announcement -- Aunt Evie, the family matriarch, is dead. With Dan in tow, Michael follows his family to Sugar Creek, where he spent his summers growing up, to prepare for the funeral.<br><br>Amid an overabundance of memories and relatives, Michael's world begins to slip. His dysfunctional family, Evie's death, and an old friend's confession all threaten to smother him. Worse, in his grief and confusion he seems determined to inadvertently push everyone away, including his lover. Can he and Dan move beyond his family and his past to a new life together, before Michael's insecurities tear them apart?

It's All Relative

My cousin buries her face in Aunt Billy’s chest to block out the nightmarish vision just a few cars away. “I want to go home,” she whispers. Our aunt pets the girl’s hair with long, soothing strokes and murmurs that she knows, she knows.


“Well?” Dan asks, coming around the front of the car to where I stand. He eases a comforting arm around my shoulders, pulls me close and gratefully I lean into him, let him take control. Concern laces his features, giving him an almost angry appearance with furrowed brow, mouth drawn down, eyes flashing in the sunlight. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”


I force a laugh that sounds fake to my own ears. “I have to be,” I tell him. “Too late to turn back now.”


Aunt Billy leads Emily to the house and I start to follow, but Dan doesn’t budge, just catches my hand and I turn to find him staring at me with such intensity that I have to ask, “What?”


Chapter 178